


daylight procession

by perennials



Series: whence [10]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aobajousai, Character Study, Gen, Manga Spoilers, Post Timeskip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:07:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23493700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennials/pseuds/perennials
Summary: Happiness multiplied tenfold is still the same breathtaking spectacle.
Series: whence [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1419766
Comments: 7
Kudos: 120





	daylight procession

Kindaichi gets him a coffee maker for his twenty-second birthday because apparently he looks tired and apparently coffee is a useful antidote to tiredness and apparently, once at a crowded street side bar, he had mentioned being into the whole bachelor with a fancy highrise apartment thing. The first two points are justified. Akira has no recollection of the third, but Kindaichi doesn’t lie. He figures he must have slipped up again.

Growing up has been a strange, farcical kind of affair. First there had been their high school graduation, adorned with empty button-holes and flowers blooming out of season. Then he had wandered around aimlessly for a while and found himself, by chance or mistake, in university. Somewhere along the way he stopped parting his hair down the middle and came to terms with the fact that he liked boys. And now: a coffee machine.

He pokes at the thing with his forefinger. It doesn’t budge. He contemplates calling Kindaichi to ask why it did not occur to him to add coffee capsules to the oversized Takashimaya gift bag he had shoved the coffee machine and the expensive store-bought birthday card in.

Never mind. Akira had placed his own order for capsules anyway, the morning after a hazy celebration with friends and acquaintances at some crowded street side bar. At some point Oikawa had called from Argentina to make fun of him, and Akira had felt something strange and unpleasant twist in the heart-side of his chest. Later, walking home while Kindaichi waxed lyrical about all the girls he hadn’t spoken to, he would identify that sensation as yearning.

Growing up has been a strange, farcical affair. Yet in a way it feels natural to Akira, the way socks go on feet and things fall apart when dropped from high places. He has embraced all the complexities of dealing with people outside of the safety of a classroom and the zoo enclosure of a volleyball court. Kindaichi tells him he is too good at this, paws at his shoulder and asks him how he gets all the pretty people in the room to look at him. Akira shrugs his hand off and orders more edamame.

He pops a coffee capsule inside his new coffee machine. It makes a clean, satisfying click. He presses the button and coffee begins to hiss out alongside a thin stream of steam. This sound, too, is clean and angular, easy on the ears. He had waited a week for the capsules to arrive. During this time he commuted from university to his dingy lowrise apartment daily, styling his hair in the mirror in the morning, chatting about Nietzsche and bad breakups during lunch. The coffee machine falls silent. He makes a note to call Kindaichi later.

When Akira grows up for real, he thinks he’d like to be a bachelor with a fancy highrise apartment. It’s a comfortable lifestyle, documented time and again in television dramas and the threadbare dreams of his generation. Yet he finds that he still misses some things about being young and stupid and weightless. His seniors at Seijou saw the world as something larger than life, like a carnival ride or a Ferris wheel, and sought to share it with their juniors anyway, as if happiness multiplied tenfold was still the same breathtaking spectacle. They were always waiting for him to fall, always seeking out another chance to point at him and laugh. They picked at his spiking form and his slouch and the way he broke his chopsticks in half. At the same time, they were always waiting for Akira to scrape his knees and open his mouth and say _help me,_ after which they would lift him onto their shoulders as if he were a small child and carry him out of the dragon's lair, swiftly down the side of the mountain.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/nikiforcvs)
> 
> more flash fics pulled from my list of mundane everyday objects + characters. this one was for 'kunimi + coffee machine'. i associate coffee machines with a very specific and terrible period of my life colored with bright exciting things like emotional manipulation and going running at 11 p.m. for stupid and impulsive reasons. nonetheless the coffee machine here stands for something else. what does it stand for? i have no fuckin idea. but it sure does.  
> thanks for reading yet another gen flash fic! these are fun and self indulgent as fuck so if it managed to make you have even 1 coherent thought then my work here is done. as the world proceeds unsteadily through this violent period of quarantine, i hope you are doing well, and if not, at least passably. i am sending nostalgic moments of happiness your way.
> 
> have a good one


End file.
